Photo by mil8
I had a (very short) letter published in the Evening News yesterday replying to this article by Helen Martin, and thought I'd expand on it.
In her article, Helen Martin condemns the Labour Party in Edinburgh for their plan to introduce a small tax on employee parking in the city. She reckons that people driving into work keeps the economy of the city going, as well as advocating the use of out of town shopping malls:
Any shopper with the IQ of a potted plant or more, heads to out-of-town centres
I have a number of issues with the article and with the whole argument that only drivers are consumers. To take my example from the letter, if you take the bus to work then you're more likely to buy a pint of milk from a local store, talk to and know your neighbours and take part in your local community.
The alternative is being sanitised from the rest of society, cocooned in your hunk of metal as you drive from your front door to your workplace, sit in an office for eight hours without setting foot outside, then driving home again. Are you then part of the community? Do you actually have an investment in the city?
She goes on to say:
Of course, the ideal situation from the council’s point of view is that more and more people will use the bus
Actually, this is the ideal situation as far as we're all concerned. Not only does it keep the bus prices low (they're about to go up again, apparently), but it reduces the carbon emissions in the city, and reduces air pollution - something that Edinburgh is struggling with at the moment.
Also, given the cost overruns of the tram project, the Council needs to raise money to pay for vital services. We've already seen a lot of cutbacks, and need to avoid future services being axed by being a bit creative with how we raise revenue. A Tourist Bed Tax would have been one way to ease funds, a parking levy would be another. And since we're talking money, the EU are going to start fining places that can't get their air pollution under control, so in 2015 Edinburgh could be trying to find extra pennies to pay those fines.
My last point on her article is the scaremongering as she declares that the parking levy could be "possibly just short of £300" for every parking space. An annual Lothian Buses Adult Ridacard currently costs £576. Those figures should be reversed. If we're ever going to tackle climate change, then public transport should always be the cheaper option.
1 comments:
Evidently Helen Martin is unaware that over half the people who actually live in Edinburgh do not have a car in the first place. All these pay for the roads and suffer the effects of the congestion cause by other people needlessly commuting into the city by car.
Many of these people believe that they have no other choice but to drive. Ignoring the fact that Edinburgh does actually have a fairly good public transport system. Add to which the level of motorised congestion make cycling in the city less attractive. In many cities in Denmark, Sweden, The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, etc. Cycling is a normal form of urban transport.
She evidently doesn't travel to the European mainland very often, if she did she would probably be shocked to find the restriction on parking in many of the cities there. But then the citizens of cities like Zurich are too poor to own cars aren't they, and that is probably why cycling that city has a cycling modal share of over 20%.
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